Re: [Vo]:National Review admits global warming is real
Nick Palmer wrote: Philip Winestone replied to me privately and, amid his assertions of his own objectivity, he wrote You obviously didn't read the article in yesterday's National Post, where the writer wrote (from a scientific standpoint) that No, I didn't. What would be the point? Neither do I make any attempt to listen to the speakers on coast to coast AM radio saying similar things (that Thomas Malloy keeps bringing to our attention). Your apparent belief in the The C to C producers put on both sides of the controversy. IMHO the increased solar irradiance is one of two great factors, the other being increased sub sea volcanoes. Whatever the ideas/arguments that you have bought wholesale from the, frankly evil (because of their effect), climate change deniers I will show you where they are either a) lies b) logically wrong c) crude rhetoric designed to fool people so they defer to the selfish special interest groups (i.e, big Oil/Coal) who have been throwing money at groups to generate this poisonous rubbish for decades) or d) all three. Bring on whatever you have got - I will try to demolish it Big oil and coal are behind increased solar irradiance and volcanoes? I wonder whom they paid to make that happen? Finally, in a reply to John Berry you wrote:- Don't make the unjustified assumption that I believe anyone, including myself People who argue like you do often come out with this defense after their rhetoric has been challenged - I imagine they believe it makes Most importantly don't over look what you can do about anthropogenic climate change if it is happening, A: not a damn thing! --- http://USFamily.Net/dialup.html - $8.25/mo! -- http://www.usfamily.net/dsl.html - $19.99/mo! ---
Re: [Vo]:National Review admits global warming is real
R.C.Macaulay wrote: Nick Psalmer wrote.. I have to point out that these groups you mention must be American and are therefore unlikely to be part of the internationally recognised and credible environmental groups such as Friends of the Earth International (at least 50 countries) and Greenpeace International. We have the Sierra Club.. , Green peace etc, internationally recognized groups. I am not sure how credible any of them are. They have loud voices and money from sources like Soros that may raise an eyebrow. IMHO, the above are advocates of the Progressive (Socialist) New World Odor (Order) agenda Key global warming to pollution and burning fossil fuel.. ok , got that, what's the solution ? Are you giving the energy producers 24 hours to get outa the world? Where do you plan to fill up with gasoline tomorrow? This reminds me of the guest on C to C last night, he was going on about we're running out of energy, His solution, get a bicycle. I think it was Jed who recently posted a link to an expose of the hundreds of such outfits that Big Oil have been funding. An example of their use of the use of the Hegelian Dialectic, thesis, antithesis, synthesis. I'm sure that, in the Dime box saloon bar, there are people who come out with outrageous and controversial political comment, whether Republican or Democrat Never argue with a drunk.. it's a waste of time and you finally learn the drunk loves it. Like wrestling in the mud with a pig. --- http://USFamily.Net/dialup.html - $8.25/mo! -- http://www.usfamily.net/dsl.html - $19.99/mo! ---
Re: [Vo]:National Review admits global warming is real
I think the prediction was based on the evidence that Earth has been subject to periodic ice ages. Given the frequency of ice ages in the past it was simply assumed there would be another ice age sometime within the next 15,000 (?) years. Harry On 24/6/2007 7:54 PM, Jeff Fink wrote: I last posted on the global warming subject several months ago with a question that was not adequately answered by the global warming believers. So, here it is again. Why were the climate experts of the late seventies warning us of a coming ice age while we were in the early stages of global warming? Were they that stupid, or was it that an ice age didn¹t fit the agenda of the world¹s powerful elite? If the experts were that stupid in the relatively recent past, can we realistically believe today¹s experts have it right now? Jeff From: Nick Palmer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, June 24, 2007 8:03 PM To: Vortex-L Subject: Re: [Vo]:National Review admits global warming is real Philip Winestone replied to me privately and, amid his assertions of his own objectivity, he wrote First, I don't harbour beliefs or buy anything wholesale. This is your arrogance speaking; you are the only person on earth who thinks straight; the rest of the peasants harbour black belief systems. This is your fantasy Hardly, Mr W - the first sentence of your initial email started When the rational minds at Vortex start to buy into the mythology/religion of man-made global warming, we're in deep trouble Deconstructing this, it is plain that, if you were truly trying to accurately communicate your ideas, you believe that man made global warming is mythology/religion I say this BECAUSE YOU STATED IT and it therefore follows that you have bought wholesale the so-called arguments (I can hardly bring myself to dignify them with that description) of the denier lobby because no rational person, acquainted with the whole picture, could accept your demonstrated beliefs as rational - furthermore, when you state that when the rational minds at Vortex start to buy into... it is clear that you are suggesting that the less rational minds of the non-Vortexians have already bought into the mythology/religion and been already fooled about climate change and simultaneously that you haven't and that, in your minds eye, validates your claimed position as not harbour(ing) beliefs or buy(ing) anything wholesale. You plainly believe that you are remain smarter than the fooled rest (even the rational minds at Vortex) and can see through the fog that is clouding the minds of all the rest of us. As it is your ideas that are clouded and fooled - I previously offered to show you how - it is clear that therefore you harbour beliefs, and have bought wholesale, the arguments of the climate change deniers. Q.E.D. I do admit to arrogance but it is justified arrogance because I have been demolishing counter arguments against the reality of the man made climate change hypothesis since the late 80's. I just wish you people would occasionally stop and analyse the potential consequences of your unjustified arrogance and beliefs. I have seen the same stupid type of arguments come up time and time again. I see that you differentiate in your words between the word stupidity and the words lack of intelligence ... one can be intelligent and stupid at the same time Quite - I have always found the intelligent-but-stupid the hardest to deal with... You obviously didn't read the article in yesterday's National Post, where the writer wrote (from a scientific standpoint) that that glowing orb above us, may have something to do with the earth's warming and cooling cycle No, I didn't. What would be the point? Neither do I make any attempt to listen to the speakers on coast to coast AM radio saying similar things (that Thomas Malloy keeps bringing to our attention). Your apparent belief in the value of this article is an example of how you are fooling yourself with the propaganda. Deconstructing your statement above, you imply that, because the writer (elsewhere, you describe them as a physicist) writes from a scientific standpoint, that others who put forward the man-made-contribution-to-climate-change hypothesis are not scientists, or at least are lesser scientists than the one you give credit too. Guys like this one are mavericks and not in a good sense. OF COURSE the sun has something to do with the warming and cooling cycles. That is transparently obvious and totally irrelevant to whether humans are influencing the climate. Do you think that the multitudinous real experts in climate science (1000's to one against the deniers) do not know, or have not considered, this factor in their deliberations? Ludicrous! I do not know which of the solar radiation arguments this scientist came out with - there are deniers who claim that we are in a natural warming cycle due to increasing solar radiation and others (even fewer) who claim the opposite for different
Re: [Vo]:National Review admits global warming is real
You're right Harry, now it seems it could be more like 50,000 yrs before the next ice age according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age : ...The Earth is in an interglacial period now, known as the Holocene. It was conventional wisdom that the typical interglacial period lasts about 12,000 years but now appears to be incorrect from the evidence of ice core records. Therefore, it has been widely contradicted recently; for example, an article in Nature[4] argues that the current interglacial might be most analogous to a previous interglacial that lasted 28,000 years. Predicted changes in orbital forcing suggest that the next ice age will begin about 50,000 years from now, regardless of man-made global warming [5] (see Milankovitch cycles)... In any case, even if astronomical conditions were right for a plunge into the next ice age _now_, judging by previous plunges recorded in ice cores (see Vostok temperature records in above wikipedia article) the cooling rate would be only of the order of one degree per 1000 years, i.e. more than an order of magnitude less than the anthropogenic warming rate (degrees per century). IOW if we keep burning fossil fuels in the present uncontrolled way we will have boiled most of mankind to death much before orbital forcing has a chance to cool the planet again. Michel - Original Message - From: Harry Veeder [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Monday, June 25, 2007 9:30 AM Subject: Re: [Vo]:National Review admits global warming is real I think the prediction was based on the evidence that Earth has been subject to periodic ice ages. Given the frequency of ice ages in the past it was simply assumed there would be another ice age sometime within the next 15,000 (?) years. Harry On 24/6/2007 7:54 PM, Jeff Fink wrote: I last posted on the global warming subject several months ago with a question that was not adequately answered by the global warming believers. So, here it is again. Why were the climate experts of the late seventies warning us of a coming ice age while we were in the early stages of global warming? Were they that stupid, or was it that an ice age didn¹t fit the agenda of the world¹s powerful elite? If the experts were that stupid in the relatively recent past, can we realistically believe today¹s experts have it right now? Jeff From: Nick Palmer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, June 24, 2007 8:03 PM To: Vortex-L Subject: Re: [Vo]:National Review admits global warming is real Philip Winestone replied to me privately and, amid his assertions of his own objectivity, he wrote First, I don't harbour beliefs or buy anything wholesale. This is your arrogance speaking; you are the only person on earth who thinks straight; the rest of the peasants harbour black belief systems. This is your fantasy Hardly, Mr W - the first sentence of your initial email started When the rational minds at Vortex start to buy into the mythology/religion of man-made global warming, we're in deep trouble Deconstructing this, it is plain that, if you were truly trying to accurately communicate your ideas, you believe that man made global warming is mythology/religion I say this BECAUSE YOU STATED IT and it therefore follows that you have bought wholesale the so-called arguments (I can hardly bring myself to dignify them with that description) of the denier lobby because no rational person, acquainted with the whole picture, could accept your demonstrated beliefs as rational - furthermore, when you state that when the rational minds at Vortex start to buy into... it is clear that you are suggesting that the less rational minds of the non-Vortexians have already bought into the mythology/religion and been already fooled about climate change and simultaneously that you haven't and that, in your minds eye, validates your claimed position as not harbour(ing) beliefs or buy(ing) anything wholesale. You plainly believe that you are remain smarter than the fooled rest (even the rational minds at Vortex) and can see through the fog that is clouding the minds of all the rest of us. As it is your ideas that are clouded and fooled - I previously offered to show you how - it is clear that therefore you harbour beliefs, and have bought wholesale, the arguments of the climate change deniers. Q.E.D. I do admit to arrogance but it is justified arrogance because I have been demolishing counter arguments against the reality of the man made climate change hypothesis since the late 80's. I just wish you people would occasionally stop and analyse the potential consequences of your unjustified arrogance and beliefs. I have seen the same stupid type of arguments come up time and time again. I see that you differentiate in your words between the word stupidity and the words lack of intelligence ... one can be intelligent and stupid at the same time Quite - I have always found the intelligent-but-stupid the hardest to deal with...
Re: [Vo]:National Review admits global warming is real
Michel wrote.. You're right Harry, now it seems it could be more like 50,000 yrs before the next ice age according to ...The Earth is in an interglacial period now, known as the Holocene. It was conventional wisdom that the typical interglacial period lasts about 12,000 years but now appears to be incorrect from the evidence of ice core records. Therefore, it has been widely contradicted recently; for example, an article in Nature[4] argues that the current interglacial might be most analogous to a previous interglacial that lasted 28,000 years. Howdy Michel.. Perhaps there's a link here Michel.. by link I mean to the Neanderthal sitting over in the corner in the Dime Box saloon. Been there since the ice age.. Never says anything but at least he doesn't complain about the weather. He knows when his beer gets hot and when they turn off the lights.. but.. like most of us, he don't get to upset about what goes on outside cuz there ain't much he can do about it. A drunk don't ride bicycles. Richard
Re: Air threads (was Re: [Vo]:Goose bumps...)
On Jun 25, 2007, at 3:09 AM, Michel Jullian wrote: OK Bill you have convinced me that water droplets emitted at low fields might not Coulomb-explode (low field = low charge on each droplet, e.g. a single elementary charge) and therefore might form a thin linear chain along the line of maximum field, so that this phenomenon could explain your air threads observations in the wet emitters cases. But as I recall you also managed to obtain those air threads using dry emitters such as the edge of a torn piece of paper, so the low current corona explanation may be the correct one in those cases. Regarding the turn-on field for corona which you suggest might be too high for corona to be involved in the airthread phenomenon, note that domestic corona ion generators also operate with only a few kV over a few tens of cm (distance to the nearest wall, floor or ceiling which acts as the collecting plate), so dry corona does turn on at very low fields and very low currents, although maybe not in the same mode as when operated at higher fields. Another thing occurs to me, maybe the reason why you couldn't get thin beams with needles is that you didn't drive them through a high series resistance, which for proper comparison would have to be of the order of the resistance of your insulating emitters such as paper fibers (hundreds of megohms?). Maybe the high resistance could have the effect of producing only short bursts of ions by ohmic voltage drop, participating in the low current and therefore the low sideways expansion. It could also be that the fibers, being very thin, achieved a better sideways (radial) field gradient and thus made better water collectors, and also sustained a much better bond with the water vapor and CO2 from the atmosphere and thus anchored the top of a water filament. Experiment should sort this out. The problem is it is difficult to justify the time and expense of the experiment when there are so many others of potentially world changing significance. Say, the server is not responding for: http://amasci.com/weird/unusual/airexp.html Regards, Horace Heffner
[Vo]:Re: Air threads
The server is up again for: http://amasci.com/weird/unusual/airexp.html and http://amasci.com/weird/unusual/airthred.html The above mentions the Electric Spacecraft Journal. Anyone know if that outfit is still active? Looks like it has been a while since the last publication. I remember (in the 50's I think) reports of mysterious gossamer threads in clumps like cotton candy falling from the skies after UFO sightings. Some people collected them in jars. They disappeared after a bit, even in well sealed jars. Regards, Horace Heffner
Re: [Vo]:National Review admits global warming is real
thomas malloy wrote: Most importantly don't over look what you can do about anthropogenic climate change if it is happening, A: not a damn thing! Oh give us a break, Tom! At least you can say: I don't want to pay to fix the problem. Or: I do not feel like paying an extra dollar per gallon to cut fuel consumption by half. Or perhaps: I do not believe plug-in hybrid cars really save as much energy as the people at calcars.org claim they do. Please do not pretend that nobody has suggested solutions to these problems. If you have read any books about energy, or any of the messages posted here by me over the last 10 years, you know darn well there are dozens of things we can do about anthropogenic climate change. Solutions range from building more fission reactors, to wind energy, to plug-in hybrids and solid-state lighting. Do you seriously believe that not a single one of these techniques can make any difference? I think that simple arithmetic proves these technologies could drastically reduce fossil fuel energy consumption. I also think that a $14 trillion economy the US can afford to pay for these things. For that matter even if the change is purely natural, and caused by increased solar radiation, I and others have proposed ways to solve that problem, such as gigantic orbiting solar parasols. If that does not work, something else will. People have changed the whole face of the earth that we can change the solar system if we put our minds to it. We can tap the power of the sun for unlimited amounts of energy. The only problem human beings cannot fix would be the Sun going super-nova, and even that, if we had a few hundred years advanced notice, we could work around by making a fleet of star-ships to evacuate the solar system. Frankly, you seem to be a member of the can't do it, won't try, everything's hopeless school of Gutless Wonders. You think we should roll over and play dead instead of dealing with our problems. It is good thing you were not in charge when our ancestors first tried to settle in North America in the 18th and 19th century, or they would have given up after Jamestown. (Of course my ancestors were conquering Bermuda at that time, and I will grant that the Caribbean was not quite the same epic challenge as Virginia and New England, but hey, someone had to invent the Rum and Sun lifestyle.) - Jed
Re: [Vo]:National Review admits global warming is real
For Jeff Fink who asked about the original climate scare of human activity precipitating an ice age:- The predominant reasoning behind this was that human use of fossil fuels at the time produced lots of micro particulates (dust and soot) plus acid gases. Acid and micro particles can act as nuclei for clouds and ice crystals to form which would increase the albedo of Earth and end up reflecting more solar radiation back into space, possibly leading to increased snow and ice precipitation and then we would have a runaway feedback effect - hence we could have precipitated the next ice age. Concern was increased as the thought at the time was that as we were heading towards the next ice age, that the smoky/acid pollution would be like adding ice to the glacier (not petrol to the fire...). All of this human created effect would be on top of the normal pollution, of that type, from volcanoes and forest fires. A more urgent concern at the time was the threat to the ozone layer from CFC's - another threat that was warned about by climate scientists and environmentalists a long time before anything was done... Hell, I was at school then and I knew the potential dangers from aerosols and it was then that I started to doubt the real intelligence of those who appeared to be educated and sophisticated. I call them trained rather than educated. Ironically, although I have never seen it mentioned by anyone other than me, the acid/particulate pollution, and therefore cooling effect, from the much larger amount of coal burnt then may have masked the warming effect from the increasing CO2. If someone wants to take a cheap shot against environmentalists they could try saying that our campaigning for clean air (no smoke/no acid gases) had the unintended consequence of removing a brake upon global warming. I truly hope no-one seriously suggests burning a lot of coal in a dirty way to get us out of our current fix! For R. Macaulay at the Dime Box who said:- some say the earth is warming.. some say it is a natural event.. some say its caused by pollution.. others say its volcanoes. Which somebody is correct? Nobody seems to know. Does anyone have a ready solution.. nope! Is anyone working on it.. nope! Why not? All are correct inasmuch as the whole greenhouse/ warming effect has many causes. To answer your questions - lots of people know. Most reputable climate scientists know. Earth is warming. Volcanoes contribute to the natural greenhouse effect by spewing out CO2 into the atmosphere. Simplifying a bit, trees and plants and coccolithophores (chalky skeleton'ed plankton) sequester the CO2 back down again. There is a natural balance. Humans have been digging up the sequestered carbon as coal and oil (and peat) and burning it, simultaneously deforesting the Amazon etc. Thus we are putting CO2 back into the air, that otherwise would not be there, faster than the Planet can sequester it - thus we are ADDING to a natural greenhouse effect at a rate faster than the Planet can cope with. To me this looks terribly obvious but past experience on this forum and many other places over the years suggests to me that this concept appears to be tremendously difficult for many people to grasp. Any solution will be functionally similar to trying not to be so stupid as to put one's heating on during a heat wave - how hard is that to understand? The concern is that humans are continuing to do something they could control, and have been warned about, that almost certainly will lead to bad things happening. The scientific consensus has been growing and getting stronger - this suggests we should have growing faith in the science. The current contribution from volcanoes has been wildly overstated by the deniers but it exists, as it always has done. A sustained period of volcanism far beyond average levels would precipitate devastating climate change, as it has done in the past without the help of humans. Large numbers of Earth's species died out at such times because of this and other natural climate disrupting forces (such as meteors etc) . From the record it look like Earth's climate has many stable states some of which may indeed be preferable to the one we are in now. Some deniers use this to say we should embrace and even deliberately exacerbate global warming to get to one of these states where there would be far more vegetation and fertility etc. Disastrous thinking! They conveniently leave out that climate change tends to be almost quantum like in nature inasmuch as the climate seems to snap from one state to another rather quickly, not gradually as many seem to think. To get from where we are now to the fertile paradise that some deniers claim we should aim for involves going through a probably horrendous period of instability and violent changes which, as it has done in the past, may lead to mass extinctions and certainly to the effective ending of our
Re: [Vo]:Beware of bogus history of lone mavericks
Jed, I got a little tired of the constant bitching on the site... Many, many words. I have more to do with my time and energy. I didn't send you the URL of the National Post (nationalpost.com) because you have to pay unless you're a subscriber... and I happen to be one. Suffice it to say that the NP has been publishing many denier articles, the one I indicated being one of many. Having said that, I kind of mixed what another article said, with the one by the physicist in question. I believe some of the ideas to which I referred (like the sun's major influence), came from an article the day (or some days) before, by a chap called McKittrick, who is responsible for debunking the mathematics behind the famous hockey stick graph showing humans as nasty earthwarmers. McKittrick is one of those apparently erudite, intelligent, scientists who can explain things without referring to the rest of the world, including Al Gore and our own David Suzuki. Anyhoo, as for the attackers of Cold Fusion, you may or may not know that I am 100% behind cold fusion because what I've read - various papers, etc. - indicates that very definitely we're on to something. Add to that the fact that the sleaze factor behind what happened to Pons and Fleischmann, was simply nakedly incredible; I can smell a sleazeball a mile away, and these SBs made no scientific sense. Nature magazine totally offended everything I learned both before, during and after my engineering studies. But understanding the CF glass half full approach (ie - many, but not all, of the original experiments worked) doesn't mean that I think people ought to buy into every big oil/big coal conspiracy theory, and should therefore wear tinfoil hats. Oh, and I understand all too well the difficulty in creating a near-perfect experimental design, such as the calorimetry involved. But it has to be done. Far easier to let someone else do your thinking for you or let the majority speak for you, because the majority always knows... Doesn't it? P. - Original Message From: Jed Rothwell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: vortex-L@eskimo.com Sent: Sunday, June 24, 2007 3:14:50 PM Subject: [Vo]:Beware of bogus history of lone mavericks PHILIP WINESTONE wrote: Good points. When you consider it, measuring accurate global temperature is a far more difficult situation than most people know. No doubt this is true, but most people are not the ones who are trying to measure it. Measuring the temperature in a calorimeter is a lot harder than most people realize too, but I am 100% sure that the leading cold fusion researchers such as Fleischmann, Miles, Oriani and Storms are doing it correctly, despite the difficulties. They cannot all be wrong, or the experimental method itself would fail, as I said. The results would be all over the place. (Random, that is, and uncorrelated with helium and so on.) In an off-line message to Winestone, in response to his suggestion that I read the Canadian self-appointed expert, I asked him: What is the URL? . . . and I pointed out: In any case, I am not qualified to judge the methods used by experts to measure air temperature, so I probably cannot tell who is right. But my point is this: If cold fusion teaches us anything, it is that we should not gainsay experts, or take the word of one lone outsider against the opinions of experienced experts who have worked for years on experiments in the field. Many people think that the lesson of cold fusion is that lone outsiders or mavericks are sometimes right and experts wrong, but it is just the opposite. Fleischmann, Pons, Bockris, Oriani and hundreds of other cold fusion researchers are the preeminent experts in electrochemistry and calorimetry. They are not mavericks at all. This is true of nearly all the lone maverick stories you read about in science and technology, such as H. pylori causing ulcers, or Townes and the maser. The Wright Brothers are the best example. Despite all the pseudo-history and silly nonsense that has been written about them, they were emphatically NOT mavericks or outsiders to aviation. They knew more about the science anyone else, and they had golden experimental data from their wind tunnel. See Wilbur's 1901 paper if you have any doubts about that: http://www.wright-house.com/wright-brothers/Aeronautical.html They *were* aviation science; they knew everything worth knowing, and they had read the entire valid literature, which was compiled by Chanute. (I think it was about 100 papers, some of them were pretty good.) The prominent people who have publicly attacked cold fusion are all, without exception, outsiders, loners, flakes idiots such are Robert Park and Gary Taubes. I know the opposition leaders well, and they are the stupidest people I have ever encountered. They are totally unqualified to discuss this research -- or any research. Winestone wrote: If you're going to go around spouting about, or
Re: [Vo]:National Review admits global warming is real
laughing Richard - did you write this inside or outside the Dime Box Saloon? (It would sound so French if you called it the Dime Box Salon, by the way.) P. - Original Message From: R.C.Macaulay [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Sunday, June 24, 2007 10:08:16 PM Subject: Re: [Vo]:National Review admits global warming is real Nick Psalmer wrote.. I have to point out that these groups you mention must be American and are therefore unlikely to be part of the internationally recognised and credible environmental groups such as Friends of the Earth International (at least 50 countries) and Greenpeace International. We have the Sierra Club.. , Green peace etc, internationally recognized groups. I am not sure how credible any of them are. They have loud voices and money from sources like Soros that may raise an eyebrow. Key global warming to pollution and burning fossil fuel.. ok , got that, what's the solution ? Are you giving the energy producers 24 hours to get outa the world? Where do you plan to fill up with gasoline tomorrow? I believe that some of the type of smaller groups (and so called think-tanks) that you talk about have been in receipt of funds from, amongst others, the oil and Coal lobbies to appear (in public) to be Green but actually to be on the side of their sponsors - that's good ol' American pork barrels for you! I think it was Jed who recently posted a link to an expose of the hundreds of such outfits that Big Oil have been funding. No argument from me.. we got a problem..what is the problem?.. credibility.. some say the earth is warming.. some say it is a natural event.. some say its caused by pollution.. others say its volcanos. Which somebody is correct? Nobody seems to know. Does anyone have a ready solution.. nope! Is anyone working on it.. nope! Why not? Waiting on Nick Palmer to tell us. I'm sure that, in the Dime box saloon bar, there are people who come out with outrageous and controversial political comment, whether Republican or Democrat Never argue with a drunk.. it's a waste of time and you finally learn the drunk loves it. Richard
Re: [Vo]:National Review admits global warming is real
Nick Palmer wrote: Ironically, although I have never seen it mentioned by anyone other than me, the acid/particulate pollution, and therefore cooling effect, from the much larger amount of coal burnt then may have masked the warming effect from the increasing CO2. As far as I know, far more coal is being burned now than at any previous time in history. U.S. consumption has increased from 560 million short tons in 1950, to 1,029 tons in 1990, to 1,133 million tons in 2005. See: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/pages/sec7_5.pdf There are more scrubbers in the U.S., Japan and Europe than there used to be, so it may be that fewer particles are released into the atmosphere, but I doubt it. China now burns more coal than the U.S., and many of their plants, houses and factories have no scrubbers. For the past few months the coal pollution from China and the dust from the expanding Gobi desert has blanketed southern Honshu in Japan. I have recent photos from Yamaguchi and Hiroshima showing a yellow pallor over everything. Very futuristic and science fiction, like the smoke from the forest fires 200 miles south of Atlanta that have blanketed the city lately. I hope this scares the hell out of everyone. In the U.S., particulates from coal kill roughly 20,000 people per year. In other words, the death toll is equivalent to the Twin Towers attack every two months, but no one in power cares or does anything about it because we are used to it, and because most of the victims who live downwind of the plants are poor, elderly or otherwise marginalized, and they do not vote. For more information on how this might turn out, see the book by Jared Diamond, Collapse. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Beware of bogus history of lone mavericks
PHILIP WINESTONE wrote: Jed, I got a little tired of the constant bitching on the site... Many, many words. I have more to do with my time and energy. Then I suggest you stop reading my posts. Please do not complain because I add lots of details, sources, and complete thoughts with caveats. I am a programmer and tech writer and I dot every i and cross every t. But understanding the CF glass half full approach (ie - many, but not all, of the original experiments worked) doesn't mean that I think people ought to buy into every big oil/big coal conspiracy theory, and should therefore wear tinfoil hats. NOBODY here has ever suggested there is a conspiracy! That's a canard. As Bill Beaty put it: Do racists 'conspire' to suppress minorities? Do sexists 'conspire' to suppress woman employees? Of course not. Big oil and coal are doing what any businesses will do. Big coal kills 20,000 people, because they can. Any business that can get away with murder and earn billions of dollars will kill people. Or they will sell out the nation and enrich terrorists in the Middle East. It is practically a law of nature. Tobacco companies, automakers, coal, oil . . . the only way to stop them is to pass laws. Or if there are laws on the books already, you have arrest and imprison the people responsible. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Air threads
On Jun 25, 2007, at 1:13 PM, Michel Jullian wrote: - Original Message - From: Horace Heffner [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Monday, June 25, 2007 3:47 AM Subject: Re: [Vo]:Air threads On Jun 24, 2007, at 3:50 PM, Michel Jullian wrote: I had some trouble coming to terms with this observation myself when I first experimented with corona discharges, but emitter current is equal to plate current at all times, not just on average, even though the ions take ages (milliseconds) to cross the gap. Try it if you don't believe me. But we may not have corona discharges here. Agreed, but corona generated ions are, just like droplets, slow air flying charge carriers, i.e. the conduction mode in which you seem to expect emitter and plate currents not to be equal, except in steady state. I maintain that they are equal at all times, including when the very first carrier starts crossing the gap. Of course if you add a grid or a ring, or any interfering grounded object in addition to the plate, as in your new circuit diagram below, things are different. Maybe I should have made it clear that what I said only applies when, apart from the plate, there are no other grounded objects around (I thought that was implicit since none was shown on the original circuit diagram). The ground is always around. It always gets some piece of the action unless it is screened. A more experienced friend gave me the answer to this apparent paradox: the plate charge is equal and opposite to the sum of the charges on the emitter and in the air. False. This is true only on average for drops. No, it is true at all times. The discharge device as a whole remains neutral at all times, like a capacitor or any component, so current in = current out. Like angels on the point of a pin. Sigh. If you can't accept the ground is around I can see why you think this. OK, so it appears you want to utterly dismiss the possibility of drops or filaments, and the effect of the coupling of an AC signal to other paths through ground, or through a conducting filament. You seem to want to consider only DC steady state. No, what I said applies to instantaneous currents, whatever the waveform, whether steady state or not. OK, in that case you need to consider the fact the field of the drop couples to the ground, inducing charge there, as well as the plate. The coupling to the plate increases as the drop approaches the plate and correspondingly decreases with the ground. As the drop falls the current increases in the plate. Similarly, the current into the forming drop varies with the rate of expansion of the surface area of the drop. When a drop breaks off that changes dramatically. An AC signal is generated from the tip. That signal capacitively couples to ground as well as to the plate. It will be seen as stronger in R2 than in R1+R3 below (gosh if R1 and R3 are used we need yet another resistor to measure the summed current. Budget creep begins. 8^) Within those confines a ring-pass-through set-up should still be interesting. Bill did say he had successfully done that. --- | | Emitter V | . | | . | | RingO . O | | o-C1o AC Signal (Optional) . | | | | Plates ___ ___ | T1=== AC | | | | | | R4 | | V3 o | P | | | | | R3 | | | | | | -o-R1-o--G---R2-o- | | | o o o V1 G V2 Fig. 2 - Circuit diagram for ring pass-through drop/thread detection Fig. 2 is again a diagram of the ring pass through concept. It shows that there is at least one alternate current path through the ring and thus R4 to ground. This takes fixed font Courier to view. In the case of ions, at some ratio of distances, but still maintaining the stream through the ring to the plates as Bill did, I would expect a significant amount of the ions go to the ring and not to the plates (but not so for a true conductive filament). From a corona R4 would take a significant proportion of the current R1+R3+R4 = R2. Not if the low current corona emitted a linear string of ions, which is my favorite theory currently. What prevents the ions from being attracted radially to the ground ring and thus spread? Also, what prevents the ions from flying apart due to mutual repulsion? Further, of those charges that make it to the plates, I would not expect a sharp change in current from R3 to R1 as the emitter and ring are passed from left to right over the plates, but would for a
Re: [Vo]:Griggs Device Observations
Michael Foster wrote: Liquids with a high Kerr constant appear to heat up much more quickly and efficiently than say, water. Unless you tried a number of liquids to arrive at that conclusion (Kerr constant) it would seem not to be justified by just comparing nitrobenzene, which is very reactive -- with water, which is not very reactive. The more likely explanation IMHO would involve sonochemistry --and the exothermic reduction of C6H5NO2. Phenyl groups are notoriously reactive and sonochemistry is notoriously efficient. Jones
Re: [Vo]:Griggs Device Observations
On Jun 25, 2007, at 4:37 PM, Michael Foster wrote: Several months back, I had my machinist build a very small Griggs device for use in my work. Hydrosonics only sells really large industrial size machines, or I would have just bought one. I was interested in heating certain monomers and oligomers in an instant hot water method. My idea was to heat these fluids without their being exposed to a hot surface, which often initiates unwanted polymerization. The Griggs device is supposed to work in such a way as to heat the liquids from the inside out. For boilers this is said to avoid the typical scale buildup. I eventually abandoned this idea, having found an easier, simpler way to solve the problem. However, I discovered something that I don't seem to find any reference to anywhere. Perhaps I don't know where to look. Liquids with a high Kerr constant appear to heat up much more quickly and efficiently than say, water. Water, while polar, has a relatively low Kerr constant. Nitrobenzene, on the other hand has a very high Kerr constant and heats up very fast, with a relatively low energy input. Don't try this at home, folks, nitrobenzen is very poisonous. I have no formal calorimetry on this as yet, but the difference is so dramatic that the calorimetry should be relatively simple and decisive. My point is this. If the Griggs device is even slightly O/U with water, then with the right liquid it might somehow made to put out useful energy. Anyone know where I might find more info? You probably are aware things with much higher Kerr constants than nitrobenzene exist, which could be interesting: http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet? prog=normalid=RSINAK351200167901idtype=cvipsgifs=yes Interestingly, there is a viscosity anomaly associted with Benzene: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2005PhRvE..71d1503S The bad news is the fast heating is undoubtedly due to the low specific heats. See: http://www.diracdelta.co.uk/science/source/s/p/specific%20heat% 20capacity/source.html Nitrobenzene is 1400 J/(kg K), while water is 4190 J/(kg K). Nitrobenzene will heat up 3 times as fast with a given power input. Water has viscosity 1x10^-3 Pa s, while nitrobenzene has 1.863 × 10 −3 Pa s, so nitrobenzene is more viscous, and thus should draw more current to the motor as well. (This actually surprises me.) See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viscosity#Viscosity_of_various_materials Regards, Horace Heffner
[Vo]:We are the Aliens
Vs, Hope this isn't considered to be to off-topic, but with our lists connection to antigrav tech I thought this piece would offer nice perspective to the sibling-discussion of alien life. This is, really, a tasty morsel of a read. I really think it put into perspective some of the subconscious expressions of humanity. http://viewzone.com/milkyway.html Zak
